Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: touch, feel, sense of touch, tactile sense, tactility, contact, using one's hands, sensation, sense, suspicion, sneaking suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, apprehension, presentiment, premonition, foreboding, love, care, affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, warmness, emotion, sentiment, emotional state, compassion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, understanding, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, tender-heartedness, brotherly love, sensibilities, sensitivities, self-esteem, ego, pride, opinion, belief, view, impression, intuition, instinct, estimation, guess, theory, hypothesis, thought, way of thinking, point of view, atmosphere, ambience, aura, air, mood, climate, character, overtone, undertone, tenor, spirit, quality, flavour, colour, aptitude, knack, flair, bent, talent, gift, skill, art, trick, faculty, ability, propensity, inclination, sensitive, warm, warm-hearted, tender, tender-hearted, caring, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate, empathetic, responsive, receptive, intuitive, thoughtful

Antonyms: bad feeling, acrimony, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bitterness, detestation, disgust, dislike, disrelish, enmity, friction, grievances, grudges, hatred, hostility, loathing, malevolence, malice

Showing 3151 to 3175 of 4947 results

3151. Here Be Dragons

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... exegesis, returns here. But not just as a stone of God’s living Word (presence), but a fiery and passionate presence, a powerful and mighty presence, active and full of anointing to cleanse, save, purify, and mold. God the rescuer is the image here. In a sense, it is the reversal of our usual portrayal of Knight and Dragon. But after all, there is no need for a Knight without a dragon! They are inexplicably bound. Here in scripture, the dragon’s breath (or rather the seraph’s breath –the essence of ...

3152. The Writing on the Wall

2 Samuel 11:1-27, 2 Samuel 12:1-31, John 7:25-44, John 7:45--8:11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... into God’s image. We are then image-bearers of God’s love and mercy, because we have been in-graved with the directional indicator of God, allowing us to keep our focus on God before all else, to see God as first. We are in a sense wearing the signature clothing of God, stamped with the insignia, “Made by God!” However, in the absence of God’s “signature” heart-tattoo, we tend to engrave upon our hearts whatever our eye beholds! And left to our own devices, our hearts will desire all kinds of ...

3153. Run Away Bride

Exodus 24:1-18, Matthew 22:1-14, Hosea 1:1-2:1

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... soiled by our spirits, when they have eaten “toxic food” instead of the food of the Lord’s table. I saw an article this week about a fish in South America, when cut open after the catch, revealed a plethora of trash –bottle caps, wrappers, plastic, filth. In a sense, this is what happens to our hearts when we turn our love to the things of the world. Or when we allow guilt, shame, regulations, rules to govern our hearts instead of love. Love is what drives God to pick us up and clean us up and still ...

3154. Mercy Me!

Romans 14:1--15:13, Luke 6:27-36, Luke 6:37-42, Luke 6:43-45

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... knowing. For what/whom we don’t know, we judge the most. Our judgements reveal more about who we are than who we are judging in fact. They reveal our own insecurities, weaknesses, jealousies, issues of control and need. What would happen if we could use our sense of wonder and curiosity about the world and about others instead of our razor sharp critical skills? What would happen if we were to treat others not as objects of our disdain but as subjects and neighbors in God’s world who are beloved as much ...

3155. Sealed and Sanctified

Matthew 2:1-12, Genesis 14:1-24

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the Day of Atonement to enter into the inner chamber of the Tabernacle in order to stand face to face with God. To “face” God meant to serve as an advocate for God’s holy people, so that the sins of the people might be forgiven. In a sense, they served as a symbol of the repentance (turning toward the face of God) for all of Israel.** Epiphany literally means to “shine forth.” On Epiphany Sunday we turn towards the shining face of Jesus. We come before Him face to face, just as the Magi did those ...

3156. Scroll Bread and Honey

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the Messiah. Because Messiah is God’s sweet promise coming to fruition. God’s own prophecy at hand! Where else have we seen locusts in scripture? Oh yeah….when God acts! Against the Egyptians! Big time locusts, and not in a good way! But in a sense, it’s ironic. God sends swarms of “consumers” to basically eat everything in sight, creating a famine. The locust in the Exodus is the consumer. In the story of John the Baptist, the locust is the consumed. All of that nourishment they have taken in ...

3157. Deliverance (Angel on Your Shoulder)

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of these angel beings as “Human Whisperers.” After each encounter with an angelic being, whether Gabriel, or the heavenly host, or God’s own presence in the form of the Holy Spirit, the recipient is filled with joy, calm, humility, and a trusting sense of divine chosen-ness. These are ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary grace. And their lives will never be the same. We have an expression in our culture for someone who has experienced and survived a near fatal car crash, or a fall down ...

3158. The Field House

Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 4:23-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... lay down with lambs. Likewise, when Jesus wants to teach God’s people the ways to learn and the kind of community God means to forge, he goes up on a hillside and gathers the people around him in one of the first true field “communities.” In a sense, Jesus forges the first “field houses.” Wherever he goes near the mountains or on the seas, he gathers people in to listen and learn, to laugh and to praise, but then sends them out again into the fields to proclaim God’s glory, and to announce His ...

3159. Sweet Vine

John 15:1-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... needs of other vines, and we work within the context of many vines that make up a vineyard. Some might call that the Church. How does this happen? The scriptures for today suggest, this is not a matter of gene pool. It’s a matter of where our sense of “self” has been rooted –where we’ve drawn our DNA (Divine Nature of the Almighty) and incorporated it into our minds and hearts relationally.* “Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains in ...

3160. Seeing with Eyes Closed

Exodus 34:1-28, Exodus 34:29-35, John 1:1-18, Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... .” Out of that creative disruption comes a new and fresh direction, a stunning realization of the Truth of the gospel, and a new awareness of faith and the presence of Jesus in our lives. And with that comes a new direction for life and a new sense of mission. In that one act, God forgives us of our past, stuns us into right thinking and righteous living, and propels us forward into mission in Jesus’ Name. It’s a form of what the scriptures like to call in agricultural lingo, “pruning.” Pruning is ...

3161. Job and the Mind Storm

Job 42:7-17, Job 42:1-6, Job 38:1--41:34

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... he’s quickly put in his place by God who we see as not just powerful but gentle and merciful to boot. God does not operate by plans, legalities, agendas, or our sense of justice. Thank goodness. God is a God of unpredictable and unfathomable love. God is a God of out-of-this-world mercy. God does not operate by our sense of fairness and proportion. God operates out of an unexpected, unpredictable, overflowing dynamic of mercy, love, and extreme patience. That kind of God doesn’t strike Job down for his ...

3162. Ask Jacob!

Matthew 6:25-34, Genesis 25:19-34

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... by the turmoil going on in our culture. They are hungry for something more. Their hunger pangs are such today that they will give up anything and everything to fill themselves up, even if that filling we take in isn’t good for us in any sense of the word. We are sailing in a sea of self-gratification. How can we be Christian, worship God, deepen our faith when we are surrounded by a culture of self and immediate gratification? Certainly, our world has no shortage of “fillers” that we can partake ...

3163. Metathesiophobia

Ecclesiastes 11:1-6, 1 Corinthians 3:1-23

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... of people. It has not learned how to offer this new kind of people grace and love. And it has not learned how to encourage this new kind of people to invest in faith, and in a faith community, in Jesus, and in a mission that summons their sense of care and compassion, vulnerability and vision. The Church has become a “wall flower” in the digital dance of 21st century culture. It does not know the steps and is afraid to make a move. It has become paralyzed and immobile and finds itself more and more on ...

3164. The Wild Within

Luke 4:1-13, Mark 1:9-13, Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... The disciples’ stormy sea The valley of dry bones Moses on the mountaintop, his face glowing The woman at Jacob’s well The winds of Pentecost And we have many, many examples of wilderness places, times of transition and preparation, temporal time, God time. In a sense, the wilderness is “ground zero,” where God is sustenance and source, provision and power, and we come out reborn: 40 days of rains and floods in which Noah sailed the deep 40 days for Moses in Midian 40 days of Moses on Sinai 40 days ...

3165. The Art of Keeping Quiet

Luke 1:5-25, Ezekiel 3:16-27

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... in vain. His doubts consumed him so much that he couldn’t believe it when God actually appeared in the form of an angelic presence to tell him that his wife, now barren for years, would bear him a son. Zechariah had lost his sense of quietness. He had lost his sense of faith, of trust, of hope. He had lost his belief in the mystery and miracle of God. His critical voice, his grief, his inner tumult, his despair had overtaken him. And his mind couldn’t stop talking, couldn’t stop worrying, couldn’t ...

3166. The Tempest

Jonah 4:1-11, Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 2:1-10, Jonah 1:1-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... could sort through some of his feelings, God brought him safely to a new place. The story of Jonah is even more realistic for us I think than the story of Oz or the story of Wild Things. For our journey through grief and anger, our attempts to make sense of our conflicts and problems, are rarely solved in one night. Grief is a gradual process. Anger sometimes takes a while to abate. And like Jonah at the end of his story, we may take a long, and sometimes frustrating time to come to that new place. But the ...

3167. Why Can’t I Have It All?

Genesis 3:1-24, Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... constant struggle between the need to feel special and individual and the need for relationship and connection with others. We spend our days evaluating where our needs start and end, and how and to what extent we will care about the needs of others. In a sense, this is our human purpose, to learn what it means to be whole and yet to love. It started with a garden gift. It started again with the gift of Jesus’ sacrificial redemption. So the question remains, how will you spend your life? How will you see ...

3168. The Phrase We Never Want to Hear

John 20:19-23, John 20:24-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... filled Dr. King as he thought about the danger facing him and his family if he continued to follow God’s calling. He wanted to run away. He wanted to give up. He began praying to God and confessing his fear and his weakness. And he said he sensed an inner voice saying, “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” That prayer, that voice of assurance, allowed Dr. King to face his calling with courage ...

3169. Fake News vs. Fantastic Good News

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... of his prayers centered around the question, “Why?” Why was his family going through this crisis without him? Why had his father died young? Why couldn’t God stop the storms and the floods hitting his family’s home? And as he sat there feeling helpless, he sensed a voice inside of him saying, “You don’t have to do this alone. You’re not by yourself.” At that moment, Okung reports that he realized he had never been alone. As he said about that night in the chapel, “I knew only God could be ...

3170. A Robot in the Pulpit

John 14:15-31

Sermon

King Duncan

... the central requirement for discipleship because it gives our life purpose, it requires a sacrifice, and it changes lives. Loving like Jesus gives our life purpose. In this sense, Jesus’ command is a gift. How many of us know people who are never satisfied, who are always chasing after some accomplishment or milestone that will give them a sense of purpose? It’s exhausting and frustrating to build your life around titles or accomplishments or image. When you base your life’s purpose on external values ...

3171. Rock of Salvation

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... very popular critters with local farmers, who need underground sources to water their crops and animals. Water is a necessity to life. We as human beings can’t go more than a few days without water. Water makes up a good portion of our physical bodies. In a sense, it is the essence of biological life. That makes water seeking a primary goal in our everyday lives. For most of us, it simply means going to the store and buying bottles of water or running our home tap. But for many in other parts of the world ...

3172. Apostles of Hope

John 20:19-23, John 20:24-31

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... challenging conditions. In fact, if anything, the challenges of loss and grief can unite us, can energize us to fight back with the best within us, can encourage us to reach out to others in unprecedented ways, can bring out in us that deeply embedded sense of what it means to be human and one global people. This is what it means to be an “apostle.” And I imagine this same feeling of new energy, creativity, empowerment, and challenge must have also flowed through the veins of Jesus’ disciples in the ...

3173. Sheep Just Wanna Have Fun

John 10:1-21, Psalm 23:1-6

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , sheep were referred to as rather unintelligent animals that wander aimlessly away if the Shepherd is not there to guide them. Yet, it seems, given the opportunity, sheep would rather play organized games than simply wander aimlessly through the fields. They apparently have a sense of community, a passion for assisting each other, and definitely a zeal for fun. Open up the gate, and sheep will find a new way to play! Should we be surprised? The human spirit too has a natural inclination for making the best ...

3174. A Dirt Story

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... be the pastor’s son—said with alarm, “You mean I’m made out of dirt?” His teacher responded, “Well, in a sense, yes.” He thought for a moment, processing this information through his four-year-old brain, then stated wide-eyed, “My Mom is NOT ... over the place. And the soil on which the seed is sown? That’s us. In fact, it’s everyone in this world. So, in a sense, we are all dirt. But not all dirt is the same. God’s grace is available to everyone, but not everyone responds in the same way ...

Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.

Amos Bronson Alcott

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